High school football players from across province test skills in all-star game

Storylines converge at Senior Bowl

A scrimmage for high school football players vying to be part of the 23rd annual Senior Bowl all-star game goes on at Clarke Field on April 15, 2012, in Edmonton.

Photograph by: Voss, Megan
, Megan Voss / Supplied / Edmonton

EDMONTON - For John Maxwell, it was one more chance to play football.

For Rock Switzer, it was one more step on a path that, hopefully, takes him to an NCAA school.

Joshua Collins lives for any opportunity to get on the field, even if Football Alberta’s tryout camp for 180 graduating Grade 12 students from northern Alberta was held in the snow and cold at Clarke Field during the weekend.

Forty players will be selected Monday to the North team for the 23rd annual Senior Bowl high school football all-star game on May 21 at Foote Field.

“Football has always been my life. I can’t see myself doing anything else,” said Collins, 17, who was among a dozen players from six-man or nine-man high school football teams participating in the camp.

“I plan on playing for the U of A,” continued Collins, a linebacker/running back who never left the field with the Lac La Biche Huskies last season. “If that doesn’t work, I’m going to fall back on the (Edmonton) Huskies or Wildcats.”

Collins has received invitations to the training camps of both Edmonton junior teams.

“If I do go for the U of A, I plan to take kinesiology, so I can hopefully be part of the U of A team afterwards,” he said. “Once I get old and can’t move that much anymore, I’m going to hopefully move back to Lac La Biche or another small town and just bring football back to the community.

“Football is revolutionary. It changes your life. Football doesn’t just teach you how to take a snap or read the plays. I probably learned more life lessons in football than anywhere else.”

Collins’ love of football was inherited from his father, Frank, who was a six-foot-three, 250-pound lineman with the Edmonton Huskies and University of Alberta Golden Bears.

“I feel like I had a lot to live up to,” said Joshua, who is five-foot-nine “and a half with my cleats on” and a solid 195 pounds.

Collins played 12-man football until 2010, when he suffered a bad concussion and his team had to fold because of a lack of players (they had only 16 to start the season), so switching to six-man football last fall took a few adjustments. But he enjoyed the open-field tackling, which was a big part of the game with fewer players and a smaller American-sized field.

“Usually, if you miss your tackle, it’s a touchdown,” he said.

Still, he prefers the 12-man game “just because it’s a tougher game.”

Maxwell, 18, said he had to make “a bit of an adjustment” this weekend after playing six-man football with the Fort McMurray Trappers.

“Just the number of people on the field throws you off,” he said. “In six-man, it’s a lot more open. You can see everything a lot better. In 12-man, you’ve got a bit more of a cluster there, but it comes back.”

Both Maxwell and Switzer, who played nine-man football with Edmonton’s Victory Christian Crimson Knights, are quarterbacks, but they’re heading in opposite directions.

While the talented Switzer, 17, is looking at options that range from being a NCAA ­Division 1 walk-on to playing junior college football in California, Maxwell expects to hang up his cleats.

Maxwell, one of six Fort McMurray players in the camp, said he came out “to see where I stack up against the competition and just getting to play with the best players in Alberta. Honestly, just to play football one more time was really the main reason. I didn’t come out here with high expectations of making the (Senior Bowl) team or anything.”

With an opportunity based on his marks to receive free tuition for his first year at Keyano College, Maxwell admitted: “I can’t see myself leaving Fort McMurray and we don’t have a team there.”

That doesn’t mean he plans to leave football completely behind.

“I’m actually looking to be a high school teacher,” he said. “That way, I’d hopefully end up back there and, hopefully, coaching the high school team at some point in the future.”

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